TOKYO -- It's 3 a.m. and you've got a hankering for a bag of dried squid and a Coke -- and maybe the new compact disc by the Yellow Monkey to rock you to sleep.
But you're tired, and you don't feel like making small talk with some grumpy overnight clerk in a convenience store.
It's time for RoboShop.
Super RoboShop 24, which opened last month in a busy downtown neighborhood, is Tokyo's -- and probably the world's -- first convenience store run entirely by robots, with no clerks or other humans present.
Customers browse the long display cases of food, drinks, cosmetics, magazines and household goods, writing down their product numbers on an order card. The customer then punches those numbers into a keyboard similar to an ATM, drops the total due into the coin slot and waits as "Robo" goes to work.
Robo, a sort of mechanized bucket, whizzes along behind the display case glass and stops in front of each item, which is then dropped in, vending-machine style. Robo knows to choose the biggest items first, so a big bottle of aftershave or a Cuisinart doesn't squash a platter of fresh sushi. In a few seconds, Robo has zipped over and back and up and down and collected a basket of goods, which it then dumps through a small trap door to the waiting customer.
People around the world are still trying to figure out how they feel about an IBM computer named Deep Blue whipping the world's champion chess player.
Now along comes a store that makes humans obsolete in the mundane daily task of selling bread and milk.
In Japan, the idea has many boosters.
"I find this interesting and fun, and I think everybody else will, too," said Kokoro Miyata, 19, who studies accounting at a junior college in the neighborhood.
Americans will soon get a chance to register their opinion. Tsuneo Kanetsuka, president of Super 24 Corp., said plans are in the works for a RoboShop on Fifth Avenue in New York, as well as 20 more shops in Tokyo and 20 smaller robot-controlled vending kiosks.
Kanetsuka said RoboShop taps into the current wave of "silent consuming," in which buyers purchase goods through mail-order or even through e-mail on the Internet without ever talking to a human sales clerk.
"This is everybody's dream," said Kanetsuka. He said his company saves money on employee salaries and passes those savings on to consumers: a can of Coke costs the equivalent of 92 cents just about everywhere else in Japan, but at RoboShop it's 75 cents.
Kanetsuka also said manufacturers have a chance to display new or unusual items that many traditional convenience stores don't carry. RoboShop features a broad range of products commonly found in Japanese shops, from sandwiches and noodles to sodas and cologne and Japan's hugely popular serialized comic books. But the shop also carries an eclectic mix of $90 French watches, pet shampoo, condoms in little packages that look like Japanese passports, a $700 bottle of bumblebee extract that is supposed to be a health tonic and a $90 package of herbal tea.
RoboShop essentially is a huge vending machine -- although far more elaborate. It is the logical next step, given Japan's position as vending machine capital of the world. Just about anything -- whiskey, meat, flowers and clothing -- is available in the 5.4 million machines here, which sell about $42 billion worth of goods each year.
Kanetsuka's company got its start selling pajamas and underwear out of vending machines, and it still operates 200 machines nationwide.
Just down the street from Robo-Shop at the MiniStop convenience store, manager Yumiko Shimuzu wasn't worried about the new robot on the block.
"I never see anyone in there," she said, adding that a computerized shop will never be able to match the fast service and a warm "hello" delivered by a human being.
"People are not used to having no people around," she said.
But you're tired, and you don't feel like making small talk with some grumpy overnight clerk in a convenience store.
It's time for RoboShop.
Super RoboShop 24, which opened last month in a busy downtown neighborhood, is Tokyo's -- and probably the world's -- first convenience store run entirely by robots, with no clerks or other humans present.
Customers browse the long display cases of food, drinks, cosmetics, magazines and household goods, writing down their product numbers on an order card. The customer then punches those numbers into a keyboard similar to an ATM, drops the total due into the coin slot and waits as "Robo" goes to work.
Robo, a sort of mechanized bucket, whizzes along behind the display case glass and stops in front of each item, which is then dropped in, vending-machine style. Robo knows to choose the biggest items first, so a big bottle of aftershave or a Cuisinart doesn't squash a platter of fresh sushi. In a few seconds, Robo has zipped over and back and up and down and collected a basket of goods, which it then dumps through a small trap door to the waiting customer.
People around the world are still trying to figure out how they feel about an IBM computer named Deep Blue whipping the world's champion chess player.
Now along comes a store that makes humans obsolete in the mundane daily task of selling bread and milk.
In Japan, the idea has many boosters.
"I find this interesting and fun, and I think everybody else will, too," said Kokoro Miyata, 19, who studies accounting at a junior college in the neighborhood.
Americans will soon get a chance to register their opinion. Tsuneo Kanetsuka, president of Super 24 Corp., said plans are in the works for a RoboShop on Fifth Avenue in New York, as well as 20 more shops in Tokyo and 20 smaller robot-controlled vending kiosks.
Kanetsuka said RoboShop taps into the current wave of "silent consuming," in which buyers purchase goods through mail-order or even through e-mail on the Internet without ever talking to a human sales clerk.
"This is everybody's dream," said Kanetsuka. He said his company saves money on employee salaries and passes those savings on to consumers: a can of Coke costs the equivalent of 92 cents just about everywhere else in Japan, but at RoboShop it's 75 cents.
Kanetsuka also said manufacturers have a chance to display new or unusual items that many traditional convenience stores don't carry. RoboShop features a broad range of products commonly found in Japanese shops, from sandwiches and noodles to sodas and cologne and Japan's hugely popular serialized comic books. But the shop also carries an eclectic mix of $90 French watches, pet shampoo, condoms in little packages that look like Japanese passports, a $700 bottle of bumblebee extract that is supposed to be a health tonic and a $90 package of herbal tea.
RoboShop essentially is a huge vending machine -- although far more elaborate. It is the logical next step, given Japan's position as vending machine capital of the world. Just about anything -- whiskey, meat, flowers and clothing -- is available in the 5.4 million machines here, which sell about $42 billion worth of goods each year.
Kanetsuka's company got its start selling pajamas and underwear out of vending machines, and it still operates 200 machines nationwide.
Just down the street from Robo-Shop at the MiniStop convenience store, manager Yumiko Shimuzu wasn't worried about the new robot on the block.
"I never see anyone in there," she said, adding that a computerized shop will never be able to match the fast service and a warm "hello" delivered by a human being.
"People are not used to having no people around," she said.
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